High Ropes Course

Spencer went on a Boy Scout camp out in December 8, 2012.  The next morning, they all went to the "High Ropes Course".  He went on a series of six obstacles and one zip line.  Spencer does not like heights, so this was a tough challenge for him.

Here is a picture of him on one of the ropes!

It was a tough, slow go, but he made it!!

[He told me to write; "Spencer fearlessly and courageously leapt across the ropes in a single bound".]

Umm, yeah, right.

Somehow it doesn't look like he he is doing much leaping, does it?

Jeremy's mission pictures (9/2012 - 12/2012)

Here's some pictures that Jeremy has sent us and some that a senior missionary couple have posted on their mission blog.  Jeremy has been in Latvia since July 2012.  He has lived in two different areas, but both have been in the capital city of Riga.

Latvia is fairly high in latitude, so the winters are quite cold and dark.On December 21st, the shortest day of the year, the sun rose after 9:00 AM and set around 3:30 PM.  The pictures attached below are from September thru December.

(as always, you can click on the pictures to see them larger).

Riga is the capital city of Latvia

Thanksgiving dinner at some senior missionaries apartment

Jeremy said this was a typical street scene in central Riga

From a senior missionary blog (everything in quotes and italics below are copied and pasted from the senior missionaries blog);  
"...Latvia ended up with a zone conference on Christmas Day. We started the day with a gift exchange ($4 or less)"

Jeremy sitting between his mission president and his wife and Jeremy's companion

"Then it was lunch time...a delicious Christmas chicken dinner at the medieval restaurant, Pie Kristapa Kunga, next to the Riga Chapel."

Pie Kristapa Kunga Restaurant

Pie Kristapa Kunga Restaurant

Pie Kristapa Kunga Restaurant

"After our scrumptious meal, we walked back to the church for leadership training."

"And had a beautiful Christ-centered program on the birth of the Savior that brought the Spirit of God into our hearts.  We ended with a testimony meeting and closed the conference so the missionaries could call home."

O Tannenbaum [O Christmas Tree] 2012

Our Christmas Tree "experience" for 2012 was fun for us.  We usually go to a Christmas Tree farm and cut down our Christmas Trees.  We decided to do that again this year.  Since Rick was going to Japan in late November and early December, we decided to get our tree earlier than we usually do.  We went out the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  Jason, Brianna and Jack went with us!

The tree farm had a gift shop with this sleigh

Searching for just the right tree

It was a little chilly, but not too cold.

Our motto for the search was "go BIG or go home".  We wanted a large tree this year.

 

Our search came down to four final trees.  We chose the smallest of the four.

Michael was our lumberjack.

TIMBERRR!

We started to get a feeling about how big the tree was when we saw how far it stuck out of the back of the car.

Then we got the tree home and brought it inside.  We have been putting our tree in the front room, but this year we had decided to put it in our entryway so it could be taller. Hmmm, Christmas Trees do always look smaller when they're outside.  Has anyone seen the movie "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation"?  Remember the scene where Chevy Chase cuts the string around their tree and it is so big it opens up and breaks thru the window?

That's almost how we felt.  We got the tree stood up and realized; "wow this tree is tall, I'm glad we got the smallest of the four".  It was about 11 feet tall (it stuck up above the top of the star).  Then we cut the mesh off of it and "poof" it opened up so large we couldn't walk past it.  After getting it decorated, we shoved it back in the corner so we could squeeze past it to get the family room.

However, after it was all up, we decided it was a great choice and we really liked it.

O Tannenbaum [O Christmas Tree]

This was on Christmas Eve

We really liked this year's tree, but it started shedding needles big time.  Maybe it was because we cut it down in November, or maybe because of the drought and high heat we had this year, or maybe just because of the type of tree it was.  It started loosing needles faster and faster so that by Christmas if you just walked by a lot of needles fell.  We decided to take down the tree the day after Christmas.

Look at all the needles that fell off as we took the tree down.

This was the pile of needles we swept up after taking down the tree!

We hope you all had a very merry Christmas 2012 and that you will all have a Happy New Year and great 2013!

Dear Teacher, this is what I did on my summer vacation...

"Dear Teacher,
This is what I did on my summer vacation..."

(Click on the photos if you want to see them larger)

We drove to Denver and decided to go to Casa Bonita.  It has just about the world's worst food, but an interesting show including indoor cliff diving, etc.

The next day we went for a drive in the mountains above Denver and stopped at Red Rocks Amphitheater just to see what it looked like inside

Dinner at Texas Roadhouse with Kevin, Amy and Brayden.

The next day we left Denver and drove thru Boulder and Estes Park and on to Rocky Mtn National Park.

Rock Mtn National Park

Rocky Mtn N.P. - Above the tree line near 12,000 ft elevation.

Even though we're all "flat-landers" from Missouri, these roads didn't make us too nervous.

We left record-breaking heat in Missouri with lots of days above 100 degrees this summer, and it got down to 43 degrees with a big hail storm while in Rock Mtn N.P.

After we drove thru Rocky Mtn National Park we stopped in Grand Lake.  It was very beautiful and we had a nice lunch.  That night we stayed near Vail, Colorado.

The next day we drove from Vail to Leadville, Colorado.  This was a bridge between Vail and Leadville.

 

This is the "Matchless Mine" a famous old silver mine in Leadville.

The boys did NOT strike it rich while at the Matchless Mine.

On top of Independence Pass.  If you click the photo, you can see the switch-back road in the background.  (The road at Rocky Mtn National Park, didn't really bother anybody, but Independence Pass did have a few white-knuckle corners).

Two days in a row over 12,000 ft elevation.  The air sure is THIN up there for us St. Louisans!  (The elevation is only about 400 ft where we live).

As we were just driving into the outskirts of Aspen, we saw this bear along side the road.

It's normal to shoot a 50 caliber rifle 1,000 yards off your deck, right?  It is where Rick grew up!

All the boys had to take a turn...

Even Spencer hit the target dead center at about 1,000 yards.

The next day we went white water rafting on the Green River near Vernal, Utah

The rapids were about the right level for us.  Not too scary, but still exciting.

Spencer, Michael and Michelle our river guide.  She made the whole trip even better.

On the calm parts of the river, we had water fights with the rafts in our group.  We were the best pirates, because we took over another boat and took all their oars!

We stopped for lunch here.

Spencer and Michael swam in the river and then walked upstream and came thru some rapids just floating and swimming

The float trip took us thru Dinosaur National Monument, so after we got out of the river, we went to the Dinosaur Quarry.

Our rafting trip was 9 miles long and took us from "Rainbow Park" to "Split Mountain"

We stopped and saw these petroglyphs on the way to river rafting.

As we put this together we realized that we didn't take a lot of pictures of cousins, aunts & uncles, and grandma and grandpa.  We visited all of Alisa's family that live in Utah, but don't have many photos to prove it!  We'll try to do better next time.

Rick was able to spend a little bit of time with his sister as well.  It was great to see all the relatives and spend time with them.

It was an 11 day trip and was great fun. We had another great family vacation.

The car load does seem to keep getting smaller and smaller each year, we just had two kids on this trip.  Maybe at some point, the numbers will start to go back up if the grandkids go on some vacations with us?

Dear Teacher, that's what I did on my summer vacation.